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"City of lost illusions," Paris then London, one and the same to the vulnerable mediocrity (Leslie Howard) cruising for abuse. Lack of inspiration banishes him from the artistic coterie, at medical school he's visual aid for the lecture on clubfeet. The female form is idealized romantically on paintings and clinically on textbooks, the real thing is a tearoom waitress on the coarse side (Bette Davis), "anemic" is the protagonist's verdict upon meeting her. He's infatuated and she's scornful, his high forehead a nice target for her grinding heel. Up and down they go, mostly down, rancid ruptures followed by resigned reunions. "After all she's done... How could you?" "That's what I'd like to know." A pre-Code abbreviation of W. Somerset Maugham, sculptured by John Cromwell along the divide of the stilted and the raw. Love is something the wry authoress (Kay Johnson) writes about for kitchen maids, marriage is a family portrait smeared by the stogie spat out by the philandering salesman (Alan Hale). A curious panoply of visual ploys skims the masochistic mind, focus-out transitions that blanch the screen into an exam page and superimpositions that project a fleshy thought over the classroom skeleton, Ozu close-ups for frontal awkwardness. "I'm always afraid of... boring you." The warmth of the docile damsel (Frances Dee) cannot possibly compete with the anti-heroine's venom, not when Davis is onscreen shedding her ingénue skin for the full wounding force underneath. Chewing on a Cockney accent with provocative hostility, aiming her peepers at the lenses like loaded pistols, she simmers and rumbles until she turns a flamethrower of loathing onto her leading man. ("And after you kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth! Wipe my mouth!") Her character may be extinguished in the end but her Bovary streak continues in Vidor's Beyond the Forest. With Reginald Denny, Reginald Owen, Desmond Roberts, and Reginald Sheffield. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |